Jul 31 Beyond Salvation Release The Betrayer Lyric Video

The Manchester band returns with a fistful of thrashWords: Phil Weller

When Beyond Salvation opened up this year’s Metal To The Masses Manchester competition at Rebellion, playing in the first heat alongside Saurr, The New Breed and Dead Moon Lizard Kings, they performed with fire in their bellies. The competition, it seemed, how brought the best out of them; their riffs seemed sharper, the pulse of drums more frenzied and the roared vocals sounded angrier and fiercer than ever before. In short, they smashed that heat – and deservedly won – and new single The Betrayer, a staple in their live set for a little while now, manages to eschew the same beastliness they did on that night.

It starts slow and dark, mourning clean guitars and funeral bells soon swept aside for a rollicking, foot-on-the-gas riff. Jon Pedley’s voice is the guttural forefront of their attack, flanked by deft guitar harmonies that, at the song’s peak, burst into the foray and take the song to a whole new level. But that’s not to say the track doesn’t have its troughs as well, and dynamic downshifts, iced with Martin Coker’s smooth, luscious lead playing broadens their range and works to further emphasise their colossal closing salvo.

Its chorus meanwhile is a veritable barnstormer, simplistic but punchdrunk and venomous it’s able to quench every metalhead’s thirst for aggression and secret desire for an accessible edge in the same breath. A job well done.